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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28991976">far beyond into the swimming sea of stars</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/augustfai/pseuds/augustfai'>augustfai</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Space, Astronaut Sylvain, M/M, fear of drowning (not major)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 10:13:21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>18,161</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28991976</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/augustfai/pseuds/augustfai</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>For Felix, it was never really about space. It was about the promise of the stars and the way Sylvain pointed at them for so many years. It was about how Felix never tired of following the line of his arm to the tip of his finger and beyond, beyond.</i>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Felix and Sylvain grew up sharing one dream: to become astronauts together. Now, decades later, Sylvain is going to space for eight months to live on the International Space Station—and Felix has to learn how to be alone on Earth. </p><p>Written for the FE3H AU Bang, with art by @cherryconke.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Felix Hugo Fraldarius/Sylvain Jose Gautier</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>92</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>The Three Houses AU Bang</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>far beyond into the swimming sea of stars</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This fic was written for The Three Houses AU Bang, and I was lucky to work with <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/cherryconke">@cherryconke</a> - her beautiful art is embedded into the fic. Every time I look at both pieces my heart flutters, and I hope you all feel the same way!</p><p>Note that I am not an expert on space. Before I started doing research for this fic, I didn’t actually realize that you could go to space for six months and just...come back. So if you are very knowledgeable about the great unknown that is our universe, and you spot a technical error, please be kind! (I also willingly changed some things, so there’s that too.)</p><p>Thank you to my betas, without whom I would be drowning in em dashes and straight up incorrect grammar.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p></p><div class="center">
  <p>
    
  </p>
</div><p> </p><p>
  <b><em>the launch</em> </b>
</p><p>Somewhere in Florida, standing still on a platform ninety feet above the ground, Sylvain turns to his crewmate and winks.</p><p>Edelgard simply stares at him as her lips tighten into a thin line. “We’re about to be launched into the great unknown,” she says. “And that’s what you’re doing? Winking at your crewmate?”</p><p>Sylvain shrugs. To be fair, he wants to say, he wasn’t really thinking of Edelgard as his crewmate. Or even as Edelgard. He was looking through her and thinking about someone else. Someone a little taller, with much darker hair. Someone whose lips would also be set in the same exasperated line. Someone who should be here with him but is at home instead, probably washing up after dinner.</p><p>“Madam,” Sylvain says, and fake bows as much as he can in their bulky orange suits. “I’m just trying to make you less nervous.”</p><p>“I never said I was,” Edelgard retorts, but her breath quivers a little on the last note. “We’re—” she continues, trying to steady herself and mostly succeeding. “We’re almost there.”</p><p>So they are. Sylvain glances across the platform, where their other crewmate Petra has just used what astronauts call the Last Toilet on Earth. She raises her hand: she’s ready to ascend. The ground crew shuffles around her, watching her steps, hovering as they move into a gangway that will take them to the shuttle.</p><p>Just waiting here has felt like days. Weeks, even.</p><p>“Hey,” Sylvain says, and Edelgard turns. Her mouth is the same annoyed stroke across the bottom of her face, but now it seems more frightened.</p><p>Of course she’s scared. They all are. They’re going to space, for Christ’s sake. No training could ever compare to the real thing.</p><p>“What’s your favorite constellation?” he asks.</p><p>--</p><p>“What’s your favorite constellation?”</p><p>Felix, seven years old with feathery wisps of hair already brushing his shoulders, shrugs. His mouth pulls down when Sylvain pushes a heavy book into his lap. “I <em>read</em> it already,” he grumbles, and shoves it back into Sylvain’s hands. “You don’t have to give it to me again.”</p><p>For a moment, Sylvain feels bad. He sometimes gets too excited and forgets that Felix is two years younger than him, and that Felix is <em>small—</em>basically the size of the C volume of the encyclopedia in his hands. He pulls the book back so that it’s behind them instead, two boys sitting cross-legged on the Fraldarius’ front porch.</p><p>“Sorry,” Sylvain says, and pats Felix’s knee.</p><p>Felix doesn’t respond. He’s looking up instead, mouth slightly open, trying to count every single bright dot of stardust gazing back at him in the darkness. Even though they’ve done this almost every single night this year—sat on the porch with the “constellations” article in the encyclopedia, a cheap handheld telescope from the dollar store, and each other—Felix has never had any other reaction to the sky and all its oddities.</p><p>Looking at Felix like this, Sylvain has finally come to understand the real meaning of awe.</p><p>“Hey, how about,” Sylvain suggests, now giddy with the idea and the challenge of getting Felix to smile, “how about we say it at the same time? You say your favorite constellation and I’ll say mine. If they’re the same, then you can use the telescope first.”</p><p>Felix turns, finally. “That’s silly,” he says. But he’s swung himself around to face Sylvain.</p><p>“You’re silly.” Sylvain adjusts himself too so he can reach out to grab Felix’s tiny hands. “Okay, ready? On three.”</p><p>
  <em>One.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Two—</em>
</p><p>--</p><p>“Cygnus,” Sylvain says first, because he’s had an answer to this question since he was nine years old. “Mine is Cygnus.”</p><p>He has to yell a bit over the sounds of the preparations—the steam hissing so loud it’s almost screaming, the metal clashing against metal, the pumps pulsing and the gears whirring at a volume Felix would surely find offensive.</p><p>“You didn’t give me any time to think,” Edelgard points out.</p><p>Then she hums. “Cygnus? Really? How romantic. I wouldn’t have pegged you as the sort.”</p><p>They both look over to where Petra was standing earlier. The ground crew is beckoning the next astronaut over, either to use the Last Toilet or to head up to the shuttle to be strapped in. To be readied, like a scientific sample, for the galactic journey ahead.</p><p>“You can think while we’re heading up—out there,” Sylvain says, making a slight correction. Spaceships don’t go straight up; they just go towards blackness. “And I’ll ask you again when we get to where we’re going.”</p><p>--</p><p>Sylvain has no idea what space is like. Even after so many years researching the hows and whys of it, there is no way in hell he can actually imagine the feeling of being above it all, living in the open sea of the galaxy with no real ground to hold him down.</p><p>He’s pretty sure Petra and Edelgard feel the same way. The three of them are just scientists, after all, and not veteran astronauts. A split second of doubt flashes through Sylvain’s mind: what if he doesn’t belong here?</p><p>Another split second later, Felix tells Sylvain to shut up.</p><p>Of course. That was a stupid thought. He belongs here.</p><p>He closes his eyes. He sees Felix’s face, mouth turned down at him, one hand on Sylvain’s chest, pushing him backward. <em>Come on,</em> he says, fingers curling in Sylvain’s shirt. <em>You’ve come this far. You’d be stupid to back out now.</em></p><p>Right. It’s been a long time coming, this whole affair. He can’t go home now.</p><p>--</p><p>At T-6.6 seconds, the main engine shifts into powerful gear.</p><p>It’s as if Sylvain is sitting on a stick of dynamite, and someone has just lit the tip without any warning except for a quick wave of the hand. He doesn’t hear Petra grit her teeth and doesn’t see Edelgard’s fists clenching. He can only fathom the mad, frantic shuddering of all the parts of gigantic, man-made, beastly space shuttle—not so much in his ears or through his eyes but in his muscles and in his <em>bones</em>—bashing together metal and heat and gears and rocket fuel to lurch forward.</p><p>Then up.</p><p>Up, and away.</p><p></p><div class="center">
  <p> </p>
  <p> </p>
  <p> </p>
  <p>
    <b><em>the climb</em> </b>
  </p>
</div><p>Felix is washing dishes while the shuttle prepares to launch.</p><p>This is not how it was supposed to be. He’d planned to be at the launch site, pretending not to care and pretending not to cry and inevitably failing at both as he watched the flames and the fury of modern technology carry the craft into the sky and beyond, beyond. Even though he would have been in a separate room with the families, watching the crew on a video screen, it wouldn’t have made his emotions any less intense. Over and over again he’d imagined watching Sylvain taking the elevator up to the platform, then waddling to the other side like a fat tangerine. He’d pictured Sylvain’s tiny, pixelated hands waving good-bye.</p><p>He’d hoped to hear the roar of the shuttle thrusting into the air, hoped to feel relieved to hear it go but also gripped with fear at the possibility of it not making it through the atmosphere. In his head, he imagined his quickening heartbeat like a guitar string, thick and weighty, bouncing with sound and anxiety.</p><p>That’s exactly how it feels right now. He sucks in a hard breath—too hard—and coughs, spluttering.</p><p>“Hey.”</p><p>Felix turns, still coughing, and realizes just how much tension he has in his fists, one clutching the sponge and the other the plate.</p><p>“Hey,” Glenn says again, and waves. When he does, his NASA employee badge bounces on the chain hanging around his neck. “Why aren’t you at the Gautiers’? They’re watching the livestream of the launch. Mom and Dad are there.”</p><p>Felix is about to break the dish on Glenn’s face. “I didn’t want to fucking see it on a <em>computer,”</em> he says, so on edge he’s practically snarling.</p><p>“Okay, okay,” Glenn says, holding his hands up in mock defeat. “I get it. I took a video for you, anyway.” He fumbles in his pocket for his phone. “The quality isn’t as good as seeing the NASA stream, but I figured you’d rather see it from an inside point of view.”</p><p>Felix wipes his eyes. When his hand pulls away, it’s wet—because he’s been washing dishes, and nothing else.</p><p>“Show me,” he mumbles. It’s his turn to surrender.</p><p>--</p><p>Sylvain was chosen to spend eight months conducting research on the International Space Station as part of Expedition 75. When asked how he managed it, he always told people that he was selected because of his dashing good looks and out-of-this-world charm: “I’m just too much for one little habitable planet like Earth to contain.”</p><p>“At least this planet is habitable,” Felix would always bite back. “Unlike what it’s like to be around you for more than five minutes.”</p><p>In reality, Sylvain is a well-respected planetary geologist. People all over the world in the field know his name, at least tangentially, and he even has a Wikipedia page.</p><p>For all the time they spent together, Felix still isn’t sure how Sylvain fell into this career. They had gone to different colleges—Felix to study computer science, and Sylvain with a science-focused, but undecided major. And somewhere along the way, every time they were both home for holiday breaks or when Felix went to visit Sylvain at his campus, all Sylvain wanted to talk about his new, freakish obsession with rocks.</p><p>Something about his geology classes really fascinated him, he told Felix. Then he found he could study geology <em>and</em> space, and it was a match made in the theoretical heavens.</p><p>Some people looked at the promise of an empty canvas or the tangled affairs of politics and felt compelled to know more, to detangle the mystery and make sense of it all.</p><p>This was also true for Sylvain. It just came in the form of asteroids and comets.</p><p>He had a collection of meteorites and entire folders on his laptop full of photos of the surface of Mars. (“Felix, isn’t this <em>amazing?!”</em> “It’s…red.”) While Felix spent his days in front of screens, learning programming language and cursing the system of capitalism that forced him to learn this shit in the first place, Sylvain published papers and got more degrees. He won fellowships and taught assistantships, attended conferences and was flown to research labs.</p><p>It was all very strange to Felix, who to this day doesn’t know why anyone would willingly listen to <em>Sylvain,</em> of all people, discuss <em>rocks,</em> of all things.</p><p>But he would still drive Sylvain back and forth from the airport to go on research trips: to the Pilbara region of Australia to look at some rare ancient earth crust; to South Africa for the only other existence of said ancient earth crust; to Antarctica, because all scientists somehow end up there; and to most of Earth’s volcanoes.</p><p>And every single time, as Felix pulled up to the curb of the departure terminal, Sylvain would kiss him goodbye and say, “You should be coming with me.”</p><p>Felix never did. He didn't even get out of the car to help Sylvain with his luggage. He just pouted and watched him go.</p><p>Now, looking down at the grainy video of the expedition launch on Glenn’s phone, Felix is doing much of the same: pouting and watching Sylvain go. There he is, three times his usual size because of the suit, stepping into a small room. For a moment he dips out of view as the ground crew surrounds him to help slip on his parachute harness, and Felix struggles not to dwell on the reason why an astronaut would need a parachute in the first place.</p><p>The view suddenly shakes a bit. Felix glares at Glenn, who shrugs. “I probably had an itch,” he says.</p><p>When the camera steadies again Sylvain is waving directly in line with Felix’s vision. He’s not looking at anything except a camera, but on the other side were his parents, Miklan, the rest of the NASA launch staff, Petra and Edelgard’s families, and Glenn.</p><p>“Bye,” Sylvain mouths.</p><p>He keeps waving for a second more. When his hand drops, he doesn’t leave quite yet.</p><p>Felix stares at Sylvain staring at the camera. Maybe, he thinks as his eyes begin to sting, maybe this pause is for him. Maybe Sylvain is imagining Felix at the launch site, where he wasn’t allowed because he wasn’t “family.”</p><p>Maybe he’s thinking, <em>you should be coming with me.</em></p><p>The video cuts off there, and Glenn stuffs it back in his pocket. For a moment he looks like he’s about to leave, but there’s an awkward shuffle as he reaches out to Felix, grasping his elbow gently.</p><p>Felix twists away. “I’m <em>fine,”</em> he insists, but it comes out more like <em>fuck you.</em> His shoulder knocks against the wall behind him as he turns towards the hallway, towards a place where he can be alone. “I’m—I’m done with the dishes. Tell Mom I don’t want dinner.”</p><p>“You’ll be hungry,” Glenn points out, calling after Felix as he bounds upstairs, now freely crying and hating every single second of it. He thinks he hears Glenn say something about making a plate and keeping it warm, but he can’t hear anymore.</p><p>For all that he imagined, he never considered the aftermath of the launch: this very moment full of the harrowing and nagging feeling that Sylvain is so far away, not even on this planet. It’s hitting him now, fast and unforgivingly hard, the same wild way his heart beats every single time Sylvain says <em>you should be coming with me.</em></p><p>--</p><p>When he was little, Felix thought that the order of the planets was the order the Sailor Scouts were introduced in Sailor Moon. Not that he willingly watched Sailor Moon—it was Glenn’s show—but it was always on when Sylvain came over on Saturday mornings. And Sylvain always wanted to watch it with Glenn.</p><p>Felix, not one to be left out of anything, would curl up somewhere in someone’s lap (sometimes Glenn’s, usually Sylvain’s, and a couple of times his mother’s) and fall asleep. But he always remembered the opening theme song, with its audible sparkles and galactic anime noises: <em>Sailor Venus...Sailor Mercury! Sailor Mars (Mars, Mars)...Sailor Jupiter.</em></p><p>It was Rodrigue, Glenn and Felix's dad, who taught them all the real order of the planets. Rodrigue himself was a retired astronaut who had gone to space just once long before Glenn was even a thought. Most dads took their kids on camping trips or drove them to soccer practice, but Rodrigue took his sons and his son's best friend to the air and space museum and installed constellation lights and planet mobiles in their rooms.</p><p>When the lights and small models weren't enough anymore, he taught them how to find real constellations. He bought Felix a little telescope to share with Sylvain and gave them an encyclopedia set. The “C” volume was marked with a star sticker.</p><p>As he got older, Felix learned that to many, the appeal of space was that it made you feel small. Here you are in the grand scheme of things: just a dot, a small package of atoms floating along in the Milky Way, while the known universe continues to expand around you. No one will ever know how big it really is. It just keeps pulling at all sides, growing larger, as you shrink to the size of nothing.</p><p>His dad and Sylvain were two of the people who found that void comforting.</p><p>“It sounds weird, right?”</p><p>They were nine and eleven now, lying on the part of the roof that extended from Glenn's bedroom window, searching the sky like they so often did back then.</p><p>“But it feels kinda nice, thinking about how you're just one person and space is so big,” Sylvain mused. “Even the best scientists don't even know where space ends and where it begins. It's not like the ocean, it doesn't have edges.”</p><p>Felix shrugged. “I don’t feel that way,” he'd said, slightly hurt that Sylvain wanted to feel isolated when he could just be here, together with Felix. “I just think it looks cool.”</p><p>“It is cool! And your dad is <em>super</em> cool for even going there.”</p><p>“Yeah,” Felix agreed, because he was still at the age where he worshipped Rodrigue. “And Glenn is gonna go to space too, and then it'll be my turn.”</p><p>“Whoa.” Sylvain turned on his side, away from the sky and towards Felix. “You're like, a whole astronaut family.”</p><p>“You—” Felix started to say, then sat up quick, wide-eyed and suddenly a little frantic. “You have to come too!”</p><p>Sylvain laughed so loud that Glenn had to knock on the window and tell them to shut up.</p><p>“Sure,” Sylvain said, and rolled onto his back again. The moon was not quite full that night, but a streak of light found his face and illuminated the copper in his hair. “Let's all go. It'll be like that road trip we took last year with your parents, but not in a car. And we’ll go to space, not the mountains.”</p><p>Before Felix could respond, Sylvain propped himself up on his elbows and pointed straight above them. “Look, look! You can see the Big Dipper tonight.”</p><p>“I know.” Felix’s eyes followed the line of Sylvain’s arm all the way to the point, to the handle of the ladle that made up the tail of the constellation. “I saw it earlier.”</p><p>They stayed there, lying close and talking about planets and stars and their favorite astronauts, until the temperature dropped low enough that Felix’s mom told them to come inside. If she hadn’t, and if Glenn weren’t there to remind them of the time, they could have easily spent the entire night there—maybe even longer.</p><p>Those nights set the rest of their lives in motion: their wholehearted dedication to learning about the universe, Glenn and Felix's decision to follow in their father's footsteps, Sylvain's journey to astronaut training and Expedition 75, and Felix's unrelenting desire to follow him there. Even now, after everything and all of this time, Felix would follow him anywhere.</p><p>--</p><p>Eventually Felix and Sylvain got too heavy to lie on the roof and would just lie on Felix's bed instead with the skylight propped open. It wasn't as immersive an experience as being outside directly under the stars, and more often than not Sylvain would drag them to the porch to sit there like they used to.</p><p>But that night was not one of those nights. Sylvain was seventeen, Felix was fifteen, and just the week before Sylvain had kissed Felix for the first time. It was just one kiss and it lasted only a few seconds, but something about it made Felix feel like someone had turned on all the switches in his body at once. He wanted more of it. If it took a lifetime to get one more, he would wait.</p><p>Sylvain reached over to squeeze Felix's chin.</p><p>“I hate you,” Felix said through a squished mouth, and Sylvain let go.</p><p>“Hey,” Sylvain said then, and rolled over onto his stomach to prop his head up on his fists.</p><p>“Fe,” he said.</p><p>Felix closed his eyes.</p><p>“Fe. What if I actually did go to space?”</p><p>An uneasy feeling sparked in Felix's gut for a second, but he ignored it and elbowed Sylvain in the ribs. “Don’t be stupid,” he said, even though he knew, judging by that spark, that Sylvain was serious. “NASA would never hire you. You talk too much.”</p><p>Sylvain made a small noise, something like a cross between a hum and a grunt, and flopped back onto his back, close enough to Felix that his red hair brushed the inside of Felix's elbow.</p><p>“Will you come with me?”</p><p>It was a quiet request. Felix felt it more than heard it.</p><p><em>I would go anywhere if you wanted me to,</em> he wanted to say. <em>Anywhere.</em> But the words wouldn't come out of his mouth. He'd been experiencing a lot of that recently.</p><p>“You wanna go to space together?” he said instead, fixing his eyes hard on the skylight above. It wasn’t quite dark yet. The moon was still a pale periwinkle color, not yet bright enough to stand out against the brush of darkening violet behind it.</p><p>Sylvain nodded. “We promised, remember,” he pointed out. “You and me.” He smiled. “And Glenn, I guess.”</p><p>At fifteen, Felix could never decide if he wanted to be alone or with people. Every other second, he was on the verge of either wanting to hug his mom or never see Glenn again in his entire lifetime. He always felt tightly wound, now even more so after he knew what kissing Sylvain was like. Now he knew the delicious but agonizing tangle of his thoughts when Sylvain’s knuckles whispered a touch against his cheek before he leaned down to kiss Felix, to sigh against his lips like he had been waiting to do this for eons.</p><p>He had grown up a little, enough to learn to doubt and question, and it turned out that he was very good at applying both of those skills to every aspect of his life. He wasn't sure if he still wanted to be shuttled off into the cosmos. It felt like a dream now more than anything, but one to have while sleeping, not one to work towards.</p><p>Felix looked up again. The moon was brighter now, a stark pearl hanging in the theater of the sky.</p><p>“I told you not to be stupid,” he said finally, maybe more exasperated than he intended. All Sylvain wanted to do was go to space. Felix wanted an entire lifetime of red, freckles in the summertime, clumsy kisses. He leaned over to bury his nose in Sylvain’s neck.</p><p>--</p><p>A little past midnight, there’s a soft knock on Felix’s door, then another and another—a sloppy attempt at rhythm.</p><p>It’s Glenn.</p><p>Felix, eyes burning and head throbbing, sits up in bed and immediately regrets it. He slumps back into his pillows and digs the edge of his palm into the space between his eyebrows, but it does nothing. Even though he only cried for what felt like a few minutes, the aftermath is like he’s been hit by the same huge truck twelve times.</p><p>“Felix,” Glenn says, voice muffled from behind the door. “You okay?”</p><p>“Obviously I am fucking not,” Felix mumbles, wanting to sound annoyed, but it comes out more exhausted than anything. “Go away.”</p><p>“I have your dinner. Do you want me to leave it here?” There’s some shuffling and the sound of a glass rattling. “If you don’t come get it, I’ll just sing until you do.”</p><p>“<em>No,”</em> Felix gasps, and suddenly has so much energy he practically throws himself out of bed. He knows what’s coming next from his show tunes–obsessed brother. He could kill Glenn for wanting to do this <em>now,</em> of all times, when Felix almost punched him cold in the hallway of their childhood home mere hours ago. Anyone else would keep their distance. His parents certainly have, and Dimitri hasn’t texted either. They all know exactly what’s going on.</p><p>But Glenn has no fear, or perhaps just no common sense. If you ask Felix, Glenn is just a fucking idiot. Incredibly intelligent, but also a fucking idiot. This is the man, after all, who was diagnosed with high blood pressure <em>and</em> anemia and still decided to apply to become an astronaut, just to see if he could do it. (He could not, but they gave him a desk job instead.)</p><p>“’Greens, green, and nothing but green! Parsley, peppers, cabbages, and celery; asparagus and watercress and fiddlefern and lettuce—!’”</p><p>“I will kill you,” Felix says as he struggles to unlock the door, “and your body will be left to rot, <em>not</em> donated to science.”</p><p>Glenn abruptly stops. “Harsh,” he says, and when Felix finally pops the door open Glenn is standing there, holding a tray that doesn’t even have greens on it. There is not even the suggestion of a salad. It’s just a slab of chicken and a little portion of pasta to even out the plate.</p><p>“Give me that.” Felix reaches forward for the tray, hands expectant, just as Glenn tried to comfort him before. But this time there’s no resistance: Glenn hands it to him, careful and steady. Felix needs to eat, after all. And he’s suddenly feeling it—the emptiness in his gut, the fact that he hasn’t eaten all day because of his guitar string nerves that reverberate with tension and regret every few minutes.</p><p>“Listen,” Glenn says quickly before Felix can shut the door again. “I heard from mission control.”</p><p>Felix’s hand stills on the doorframe. So much more than wanting to slam the door in his annoying brother’s face, he wants to know that Sylvain is okay.</p><p>“They made it to orbit just fine.” Glenn grins. “Everything went smoothly.”</p><p>The anxious coil in his gut loosens only somewhat. Felix exhales, steady but strong; it feels like he’d been holding this breath in his lungs since he was fifteen, like his body was just waiting for this moment, for Sylvain to make it to the outer atmosphere safe and sound.</p><p>“Good,” Felix says, except once again it comes out like <em>fuck you.</em> He realizes he’s clutching the tray so hard that his knuckles are almost white.</p><p>He blinks once, then twice. For some reason things are getting blurry.</p><p>“Felix.” Glenn gently takes the tray out of Felix’s hands and slowly rests it on the floor beside them. “Your food’s getting cold again, and now you’re just going to make it salty by crying on it.”</p><p>“Shut up,” Felix says, and means it. But he doesn’t move away when Glenn reaches out to hug him. It’s been years—a decade, probably—since Felix let Glenn hold him like this, but if he’s going to be a good brother, it may as well be right now.</p><p>--</p><p>Eventually Felix does watch the recorded livestream of the launch.</p><p>It’s been two days since the actual event, since Felix cried for the first time in years and vowed to never let it happen again because it gave him such a terrible headache. The morning after he’d felt more hungover than he ever had with alcohol.</p><p>The video on his phone is much clearer than the one Glenn showed him, but just like Glenn said, it’s not that much of an insider’s view. It’s just a constant shot of the spacecraft sitting there, surrounded by swirling columns of steam, with a timer in the corner counting down to liftoff. Felix can barely even make out the platform that the astronauts wait on before entering the craft. But that might be for the best.</p><p>He balances his phone on his knees and crosses his arms for warmth. He’s sitting on the porch in March, and it’s probably too chilly for him to be out here, but it feels right. Like he’s bringing it full circle and all that romantic crap.</p><p>But he looks up anyway, his neck craning just like it used to, trying to take everything in at once. The sky is sapphire-lit, speckled with stars, some bright and others more faded. Felix thinks for a second: it’s spring, and too early for what he’s looking for. Even if he stays out here all night, he’d find no swan-stars above him, no birds hanging on by a brilliant thread of light.</p><p>“Stupid,” he mutters to himself. Or maybe Sylvain.</p><p></p><div class="center">
  <p> </p>
  <p> </p>
  <p> </p>
  <p>
    <em><b>grounded</b> </em>
  </p>
</div><p>Felix’s memory of failing the astronaut test is a distant one.</p><p>It’s not especially painful when he thinks about it now, either because of time or because Felix never really cared about passing in the first place. In fact, it might be more anticlimactic than anything. After all those years of building his life on a small bud that was the dream of going above and beyond with Sylvain, of doing something worthwhile with his life like his dad—after all of that, Felix couldn’t even apply to astronaut training because he couldn't swim.</p><p>In the end, his reluctance to enter any body of water bigger than the shower at home was what shut him out. Not any fear of the unknown, and not any lack of intelligence. It was almost laughable.</p><p>Rodrigue was sympathetic. “You’re certainly smart enough,” he had said when he’d heard the news. “And I don’t think you’d have trouble with the rest of the physical. But perhaps your mother and I should have gotten you proper lessons when you were younger.”</p><p>“I don’t like water.” As far as Felix was concerned, there was no further discussion. “I don’t think the lessons would have helped.”</p><p>Someone else would have kept going. They wouldn’t have let something like this get in the way of their dreams, dreams they’ve had since they were too small to use a real telescope. Glenn certainly kept trying, though he picked a different path and subverted the system entirely. Someone else would have stayed up all day and all night trying to overcome their fear of drowning to be able to go to space with their lover. It was the kind of story made for true-life movies, and it was exactly the sort of thing Felix would never do.</p><p>“You sure?” Sylvain wasn’t hurt, but he was a little sad, and it showed in the way he pulled at Felix’s hair tie to bury his face in the inky waterfall that followed. It was something Sylvain did often, but this time it made Felix feel like a pile of bricks was sitting in his stomach. “You should be coming with me, you know.”</p><p>“You always say that.” Felix wanted to disappear. “It doesn’t matter where you’re going.”</p><p>“I always mean it.” Sylvain pressed a kiss to Felix’s temple. “But Fe, I wonder—you don’t really <em>want</em> to go, do you?”</p><p>Felix had never been a good liar. Especially not to Sylvain, who was impossible to lie to like this: pliant and soft, his entire heart laid bare in the space between them.</p><p>“I want to be with you,” he’d said. It was the truth.</p><p>“I’m just not cut out for it like you are,” Felix continued. “Going out there.”</p><p>He pointed to the skylight in the ceiling. It was winter, so they’d kept it closed, but they could still see the colors of dusk settling beyond the rectangle of glass.</p><p>“Well,” Sylvain said, voice low and quiet. “Maybe I’m not cut out for leaving you behind.”</p><p>“Don’t be stupid.” Felix turned his head to find Sylvain’s hand reaching up his jawline to bring him closer. “You <em>have</em> to go.”</p><p>Sylvain laughed, breathy and warm on Felix’s lips, and kissed him again and again: each one a profound apology, or a thousand promises, or both.</p><p>It was suddenly hot, and Felix’s heartbeat was dancing a marathon out of his chest. He wasn’t thinking about Sylvain leaving or his failing the test or anything. Every atom in his body was on fire and multiplying with Sylvain’s name. He was here in this moment, fully and brazenly, chasing down the next second and the next, wanting more heat and more nearness.</p><p>“I’ll take you in my suitcase,” Sylvain whispered against Felix’s lips, which were seeking, searching for more. “You’re small. You’ll fit.”</p><p>“Shut up,” Felix almost whined. He slid one hand into the waistband of Sylvain’s jeans, suddenly overcome with the sort of bravery he never felt when they talked about space.</p><p>For once he had no room to feel embarrassed. His hands were too busy and he wanted too <em>much</em> from Sylvain, of Sylvain, to fathom any other emotion in his body. It felt like the beginning of the universe. He was tumbling clumsily into existence with a noiseless bang and felt so alive, sparking with electricity and heat and the rush of Sylvain’s skin thrumming against his own.</p><p>When they were younger, they learned about supernovas together, about how those stellar explosions are so powerful it can brighten an entire galaxy for days, or even months. Maybe, Felix thinks through a reddish haze, this is what’s happening now.</p><p></p><div class="center">
  <p> </p>
  <p> </p>
  <p> </p>
  <p>
    <b><em>the arrival (i)</em> </b>
  </p>
</div><p>It takes eight and a half minutes for a space shuttle to reach orbit. By some miracle of science and fire, an entire pseudo-house burrows its way through the known atmosphere to tear through to the other side—the dark shore of the known universe.</p><p>When Sylvain and his crew find themselves there, in that moment suspended between the lived, familiar experience of gravity and the shocking, eternal free-fall sensation of weightlessness, Sylvain doesn’t know if it’s been eight minutes or eight days. He feels slightly sick, and when he looks over at Edelgard she is as white-gray as the way she looked underwater when they were training in the giant pool and learning what it felt like to be weightless.</p><p>Only now is the real thing.</p><p>Sylvain releases the straps holding his body in place and feels himself rise from the chair. His limbs drift upwards, arms held aloft of their own accord, and he starts to somersault, slowly and awkwardly.</p><p>“Are we alive?” he asks aloud, to no one in particular.</p><p>“Yes, but,” Petra says, saying each word like her voice is a stranger in her throat. In zero gravity, it may just as well be. “We are knowing a different kind of alive,” she finishes.</p><p><em>A different kind of alive,</em> Sylvain muses. He closes his eyes, suddenly dizzy.</p><p></p><div class="center">
  <p> </p>
  <p> </p>
  <p> </p>
  <p>
    <b><em>the arrival (ii)</em> </b>
  </p>
</div><p>The stark white of Sylvain’s new living quarters makes him look paler than usual in the light of the video screen. He looks tired, Felix thinks, but then again, he’s just been blasted off the earth and thrown into space. Perhaps tired is the best he can do right now.</p><p>“Fe,” Sylvain says. His voice comes through surprisingly clear. “I wanted to call you first, you know. But when you arrive you have to call family. It’s protocol.”</p><p>“We’re definitely <em>not</em> family,” Felix says, and Sylvain laughs. The sound comes through clear as day, and it makes Felix’s chest pinch, sharp and fleeting.</p><p>“No.” Sylvain floats a bit, too high up, and the top half of his body disappears from the screen for a minute. Felix waits patiently as he hears Sylvain fumble to grab onto something that will anchor him down. Eventually he settles back into view.</p><p>“We’re not family,” he continues, and winks. “Or else the stuff we do would be illegal. And anyway, your face was the first one I wanted to see, not Miklan’s ugly-ass nose.”</p><p>Felix blushes furiously. How can Sylvain still say this shit with a straight face? Not that Felix would ever tire of it.</p><p>They talk for a bit about the space station and what Sylvain has seen of it so far: the lab he’ll be working in, his sleeping quarters, the gym, the huge bay window that looks out into the vast darkness of space and the merry, blue-green brightness of Earth below. He mentions names Felix isn’t familiar with, so they must be the crew that was already there: a large man of few words named Dedue; someone beautiful and gentle named Mercedes.</p><p>“So?” Felix asks. “Do you like it up there?”</p><p>He knows the answer.</p><p>“I love it up here,” Sylvain says, and smiles.</p><p>Yes, of course he does. It’s all he’s ever wanted, Felix knows, and he’s finally made it.</p><p>For a second he feels bitter. But he’s tired, too tired to really process anything he’s felt in the past two or so days, and he’s <em>finally</em> looking at Sylvain and talking to him again. All he can think about is how much he wants to curl up and fall asleep in the murky light of his laptop screen.</p><p>“I love you,” Felix says.</p><p>Sylvain laughs again. “If I had known you were going to say that to me without being prompted, I would have gone to space sooner.”</p><p>The smile on his face sings of the way they used to look at the stars when they were little, when all they had was a book and a telescope. Sylvain enjoys his work, Felix knows, and all the technicalities of it. But there's always been something more behind it, something nostalgic and dreamlike.</p><p>“Fe,” Sylvain says, his voice barely a whisper. “You don’t know how much I wish I could kiss you.”</p><p>“No,” Felix shakes his head. “I do.”</p><p></p><div class="center">
  <p> </p>
  <p> </p>
  <p> </p>
  <p>
    <b><em>the space between (i)</em> </b>
  </p>
</div><p>Somewhere in space, two hundred and fifty-four miles above the earth’s orbit, Sylvain is watching his third sunrise of the day.</p><p>“This is some crazy shit,” he mumbles, treading air. He’s still trying to get the hang of moving around without gravity, just as he’s still trying to grasp the fact that he, a mere human, now lives and works above the only habitable planet in the galaxy. It makes him feel inexplicably big and also unbelievably insignificant.</p><p>“I agree.” Behind him, Edelgard does a pseudo-butterfly stroke towards the window. Her hair is pulled back in such a tight bun Sylvain wonders how she can even move her face. “I don’t know if I’m used to it yet.”</p><p>“Oh, you thought I was talking about all this?” Sylvain motions around them and then back to Earth. “No, I mean the fact that I have to shake my plastic bag of mac and cheese for ten minutes to get it to cook properly.”</p><p>Edelgard rolls her eyes as she grasps onto a railing to steady herself. “You have no delicacy,” she says, frowning at Sylvain before turning to look at the planet above them in all of its round, aquamarine glory.</p><p><em>You wouldn't say that if you heard my phone calls to Felix,</em> Sylvain thinks. He's called Felix every day since they docked on the ISS, and he's discovered that if he calls at the right time, when Felix is just about to sleep and is too out of it to be rough and defensive, he'll say everything Sylvain wants to hear, all those elusive <em>I love you</em>s and <em>I miss you</em>s. Maybe it's selfish. No, it's definitely selfish. But he doesn't care.</p><p>“I thought about it.” Edelgard hasn't finished talking, and Sylvain shakes himself out of his thoughts. “The question you asked me, about the constellation.”</p><p>“So you've decided on a favorite?” Sylvain asks.</p><p>“I don't think I have one,” she confesses, and lets go of the railing to float gently upwards. “I like all of them. At least, I have good memories of them. My siblings and I would go camping every year, once in the summer and once in the fall, and we’d see who could find and name the most constellations the fastest.”</p><p>She laughs a bit. Sylvain can no longer see her face, but he understands how she must feel right now, the longing to be back home with the people who got her here coupled with the intense desire for them to be in space with her right now. They don't know where they want to be—here or there.</p><p>“You miss 'em?”</p><p>“Of course I do,” she says, and presses her hands against one of the windows, leaning forward as if ready to drop onto the bed of clouds below to be taken home that instant. “Incredibly.”</p><p>Sylvain nods.</p><p>“But we have a job to do, don't we,” Edelgard continues, and pushes off the window, kicking her way towards the exit. “We're very lucky to be here. We can't dwell on feelings of wanting to be back home or of other people.”</p><p>“Speak for yourself, madam,” Sylvain says, watching her go. He's not quite ready to leave the room yet. “Some of us have silly hearts that won't shut up about other people. How's that for delicacy?”</p><p>He cracks a smile when she looks back at him, her mouth once again fixed in a tight line.</p><p>--</p><p>After Expedition 75 docks at the ISS, things get busy very fast. After only a week or so on the station Sylvain falls quickly into a daily routine: sleep, wake up, do his mandated exercise, have a “cup” of coffee, work on his experiments for several hours, re-hydrate and eat lunch, then move on to public engagements. He takes a few breaks throughout the day, and all in the Cupola, where the bay windows are. He brushes his teeth there, too. It is by far his favorite part of the station.</p><p>But he doesn’t get to spend quite as much time there as he’d like. The romantic in him could easily set up camp there to watch the sixteen sunrises and sunsets of the day, but he and his crew are inundated with interview requests and questions from students and scientists all over the country. This was expected; they knew they were going to be public figures as soon as they were notified of their selection as astronauts, and Sylvain grew up listening to and reading these interviews and articles about life on the ISS. He knew it was coming, but he's still somewhat shocked at the sheer number of people who suddenly want to know everything about his life.</p><p>There are questions from first graders asking how astronauts poop in space; it's a standard question. Petra thinks it’s funny but doesn’t want to answer while Edelgard can’t understand why children are obsessed with bodily functions. Sylvain, still a first grader at heart, tells them to step aside—he knows how to handle this.</p><p>He answers the question so well that he gets a request from the NASA communications team to make a video on it for them to upload to YouTube. It goes viral within no time at all.</p><p>There are inquiries from other scientists, many of them geologists like Sylvain, asking about his journey to space and how he found the funding for certain projects that led him to where he is now. They appreciate his dedication to science, they all say, and Sylvain is flattered. He is more than happy to help them out.</p><p>There are questions from people of all ages coming in through Twitter: how do Edelgard and Petra wash their hair in space, what do they eat on a daily basis, what kinds of experiments are they doing, how do they sleep. Sylvain, via video conference, tells a class of middle school students about how he doesn't know how to tie his sleeping bag properly and wakes up with his face smushed against the wall every morning. They don't think it's funny.</p><p>There are e-mails from the communications team asking the crew to tweet more for the ISS’ official account. It seems, according to a private note sent to Sylvain, that Dedue and Mercedes only ever take landscape photos from the Cupola, “which is nice, but we were hoping you’d be able to provide more of a human touch to living on the space station. Since it’s you, and all.”</p><p>Sylvain doesn’t know what that means. He thinks about it as he takes a photo of his sleeping bag, which is still floating against the ceiling (or floor—there’s no up or down in space) where he’d left it that morning.</p><p>This routine goes on for weeks and weeks, until Sylvain begins to think of it as normal life. His body, too, has gotten used to floating instead of stepping, and swimming through hallways to get where he wants to go. His first instinct now is not to put his foot down, but to stretch a limb out to find something to grab, or hook himself, onto. He sleeps, wakes, works, exercises, eats, takes photos, talks about his life to anyone who has asked to listen.</p><p>And when the figurative night has fallen, it’s time to tend to his silly heart that won’t shut up.</p><p></p><div class="center">
  <p> </p>
  <p> </p>
  <p> </p>
  <p>
    <b><em>letter (i)</em> </b>
  </p>
</div><p>
  <em>Dear Felix:</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I know you’re going to read this and think it’s stupid, but I also know you’re going to read the whole thing through anyway. So I’ll just keep going.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>It feels weird writing to you because I’ve never had to do that before. We’ve never really had to, right? Even when I was away on a research trip we could always call or text each other. All we needed was an internet connection.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>This research “trip” is kind of different, though. Or I guess really different. Space is pretty far, you can’t call or text me, and I can only call you once a day. I don’t want to keep you awake, either. If I could, I would. You know that. But you need your sleep.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I guess that’s why I’m writing these letters, then, because we can’t be on the phone for hours, or talk all night like we used to, when we started dating. (Were we even dating? Do you even call it that, for people like us, when you've known each other for so long you don't even know when you really fell in love?)</em>
</p><p>
  <em>But I still have so much to tell you. I could talk about the Cupola forever. I wish I could bring you into the Cupola, Fe. It's basically just another workspace, so it's got computers and looks sort of like what spaceships look like in cartoons—with the control panel spread out, and all those lit buttons and screens—but there are seven windows, and when you look out the entirety of Earth is just there, like a big, big jewel. And beyond the clouds is the sky we loved to look at, and beyond the sky are seven billion people. It makes you feel like God, but also like nothing. I really don't feel like I deserve to see this view.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Someday in the future, when people can just go to space whenever they want, and there are tourists on Venus and Mars (our favorite Sailor Scouts, remember?), I hope I get to show you this view. We can feel like God, or nothing, together. Or we can just be. That's what we wanted way back when, remember?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Okay, I'm going to sleep now. I'll keep writing.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I love you,<br/>Sylvain</em>
</p><p></p><div class="center">
  <p> </p>
  <p> </p>
  <p> </p>
  <p>
    <b><em>the space between (ii)</em> </b>
  </p>
</div><p>
  <em>On this night of a thousand stars, let me take you to heaven’s door.</em>
</p><p>The beach is not the most exciting place to be at one in the morning. For Felix, the beach is not a place he would choose to be at any time of the day, whether it’s early or late or a perfectly acceptable afternoon hour.</p><p>He comes here, especially this late at night, just for the sounds. He likes the rhythm of the waves rushing the shore, likes to match his breath to the pattern of the waves rolling against the sand and the rocks. When his heart won’t calm down, and when the tornado in his stomach doesn’t subside no matter how hard he tries, he comes here to be settled.</p><p>The irony of it all doesn’t escape him: this is the ocean, deceitful and dark. Felix will say he is scared of nothing, but this is a lie; a lot of his fears have to do with death and his loved ones. Somewhere inside of him, too, is the unrelenting and inexplicable fear of high tide and drowning. Since he was small, he’s been afraid of the water extending a salty, frothed hand to grab him and drag him into its cold, beastly depth.</p><p>Felix shudders and pulls the sleeves of his hoodie down over his hands. He’s seated on a bench near the sidewalk, just at the lip of the shore and not any closer. He feels safe here. Still, every so often a slight chill of panic runs down his spine, then vanishes.</p><p>With the panic comes a tinge of guilt. But he’s too tired to think about that right now.</p><p>Instead, he focuses on the song stuck in his head, the one Glenn had been singing last night. Felix had been helping Rodrigue at the grill—it was June, and so his mother wanted to have a barbeque almost every night—and was too busy watching steaks to yell at Glenn to shut up.</p><p>
  <em>In the glow of those twinkling lights, we shall love through eternity. On this night on a million nights, fly away with me.</em>
</p><p>It was exactly the kind of song Felix hated because the lyrics were so embarrassing they made him want to die, and because of the way it sounded like it was made for an amateur performer to sing at bars for cheap tips. And it was exactly the kind of song Sylvain would find romantic, especially the part about flying away together to the stars. That was their thing, after all.</p><p>Felix looks up on instinct. It’s a cloudy night, and all he sees is a dense brush of deep gray. No twinkling in sight. Further out he can see a patch of dull light where the moon is hiding, but it’s not bright enough to shine past the thick covering.</p><p>He yawns and rubs at the deepening pockets underneath his eyes.</p><p>--</p><p>Felix hasn't slept properly in months.</p><p>After so many years of having a very distinct warmth nearby—not necessarily always in bed, but close enough, a text or a call and a six-minute bike ride away—its disappearance is startling. He can’t quite get used to this newfound chill on his right side, this wholehearted absence of red hair, this stark silence instead of Sylvain's low murmur of <em>good morning</em> or <em>good night</em> or <em>Fe</em> in his ear like a sweet jolt of lightning. And now, because Sylvain always calls him from the space station so late, he spends most of his nights lying in bed restless and wild-hearted, his whole chest throbbing like a fish out of water.</p><p>Before all of this, he was a morning person. He’d set his alarm for five a.m., and he and Sylvain would go on a run no matter the weather. Then Sylvain would go home and Felix would come back, help his mom with breakfast, and log into work before the rest of his team was even awake.</p><p>Now he’s regularly up at one or two in the morning, either talking to Sylvain or too restless to sleep. His family can’t even get him to wake up before nine, which is basically the same as him being dead. When he comes downstairs in the morning, there’s always a covered plate for him and a written note from his mom explaining where everyone is for the day. Work, mostly: Glenn and Rodrigue at the office, his mother downstairs in her studio where she teaches piano. Sometimes a little p.s. about Dimitri: he’s coming over for lunch, or he’s bringing groceries for dinner at five. (The Fraldarius parents have two biological sons, but also two ragtag children they picked up along the way.)</p><p>Day in and day out Felix listens to children practicing the piano, the plinking of the keys meshing with the tapping of his own keyboard as he works from the kitchen table. He used to work in his room, where he couldn’t hear anything at all with his door shut, but he can’t stand being in there anymore when Sylvain has been so loudly absent from it.</p><p>But working in the kitchen isn’t a total escape. For one, this is still the house he—and Glenn, and Sylvain, and later Dimitri when he moved to the neighborhood in middle school—grew up in. If he looks to his left there are the notches in the doorway of their heights from age five to age eighteen, scratched in on their very first and very last days of school. When he tilts his chair back towards the sink it reminds him of the day Sylvain did that in high school and the chair broke. To his right he can see the door leading to the basement, where Dimitri used to come up from his piano lessons to join his friends for homework and snacks.</p><p>Felix never moved out of his parents’ house because Sylvain was never in town long enough for them to justify renting a place together. He’s never regretted that decision until now—now, when he’s finally come to realize the meaning of true long-distance, of the word <em>haunting,</em> of what it really means to long for someone.</p><p>Maybe this is how Sylvain has always felt. Sylvain has always understood real, calculable long distances. He has felt haunted by the nothingness and everything-ness of the known and unknown universe since their very first module on space in the second grade. And he has longed to go there for just as long.</p><p>For Felix, it was never really about space. It was about the promise of the stars and the way Sylvain pointed at them for so many years. It was about how Felix never tired of following the line of his arm to the tip of his finger and beyond, beyond.</p><p>--</p><p>Sylvain does most of the talking on their video calls. For the first few weeks, he described in detail how sick he felt while his body was getting used to living in microgravity. He felt nauseous all the time, he told Felix, and also had no appetite for anything but food he couldn’t get in space. (“I miss Dimitri’s brownies,” he’d sigh, and then it would just spiral. “And your mom’s lasagna with the zucchini, and her hot pot too, and the Korean restaurant we’d always go to—even my dad’s turkey sandwiches. Felix, you know those aren’t even good, but I would kill for one right now.”)</p><p>After enough time passed and his body got used to the new environment, all he could talk about was how busy he was with the work they had to do, and also about how he felt like his new calling might be zero-gravity acrobatics. (“Fe, I’m telling you, my tumbles are unparalleled.”) He would tell Felix about the crew’s pizza and movie nights on Saturdays, and how they could never agree on which movie to ask NASA to send them next. He talked about how Petra had started to teach him her native language of Brigid whenever they had some downtime, and how Edelgard was refusing to speak to him in anything but Russian to force him to get better at it. He mentioned how he seemed to be the only one not calling his family every day. (“Not that I care,” he’d say, and smile. “I would always rather talk to you.”)</p><p>Felix mostly listens. He doesn’t have much to contribute; he works all day, and sometimes wanders to the nearby beach park late at night if he really can’t sleep. On the weekends he plays video games and does most of the house chores. He only sees his family and Dimitri. Sometimes he chats on Facebook with his college friend Annette, who moved to New Zealand after graduation to raise sheep.</p><p>But that’s all. His life was never that exciting, and now he is about as interesting as a rock. (Though, Felix supposes, Sylvain does find rocks exhilarating.)</p><p>“Hey, Fe?”</p><p>Felix blinks against the harsh light of his laptop screen. “Sorry,” he says. “I zoned out.”</p><p>“It’s okay, I know it’s late.” Sylvain reaches out towards the camera before letting his hand drop with a sigh. “Shit. I forgot I can’t touch you.”</p><p>Felix huffs. “Isn’t that why you’re up there? To advance technology?”</p><p>“Yeah.” Sylvain’s lips twitch. “I’m here to figure out how people can touch each other through video calls. Forget the advancement of agricultural practices or, I dunno, making vaccine testing more efficient.”</p><p>“Or you could just do all three of those things,” Felix points out, frowning, and Sylvain laughs.</p><p>Felix doesn’t know if this whole extreme long-distance thing is getting easier, even as the number of calls they have increase and they say things like <em>I miss you</em> less and instead talk more like they’re together in the same room again, playing video games or planning their next vacation together. The more calls they have, the more normal it all feels, as if Sylvain is just gone for a few weeks. Sometimes it even feels like he’ll be back soon. Maybe even next week. Maybe tomorrow.</p><p>After every call, when the screen pings black, it takes Felix a few seconds to remember that Sylvain is actually in a place that he can’t even imagine. When he went to Australia or South Africa, Felix understood those places as <em>places.</em> He could envision Sylvain’s hotel room, the food he was eating, the places where he did research. But this time Sylvain is floating above the earth, very much alive but also sort of like a memory removed from Felix’s understanding of space and time. It feels very surreal.</p><p>Every night Felix puts away his laptop, and crawls underneath the covers, and finds that he can’t sleep. His mind won’t let him forget Sylvain’s voice or laugh, and he can’t stop thinking about the curve of Sylvain’s fingers pulling away from the camera, disappointed that he couldn’t touch Felix just as he used to without a second thought. Felix replays the very mundane things that Sylvain says in his head for so long it becomes more like a fond memory of a song and less like a conversation. An hour passes like this, and eventually he either gets up to walk off the energy or falls asleep out of pure exhaustion.</p><p>And that’s when he knows: none of this has become easier. He’s starting to understand that time heals no wounds but those willing to be closed. A year could pass and Felix’s heart would still be singing instead of sleeping, keeping his entire body awake with a chorus of <em>Sylvain, come with me to look at the stars.</em></p><p>--</p><p>“Felix! You look...” Dimitri begins, and scrambles for just the slightest second before recovering with a bright grin. “—Wonderful!”</p><p>This is not true. Felix knows he looks like a gremlin that has just discovered the sunlight and finds it repulsive, because that’s also exactly how he feels. But Dimitri has never been anything but polite.</p><p>On the other hand, Glenn was raised in the sewers.</p><p>“Nah, Dimitri, just tell him he looks like shit.” Glenn is at the kitchen counter, hips swaying loosely to the <em>Mamma Mia</em> soundtrack playing at low volume from his portable speaker. Normally Felix would rather be anywhere but near Glenn and his musicals, but his bones and body feel too heavy to move from his spot at the table. “We’ve all been saying that to him ever since Sylvain left.”</p><p>“I’m just so lucky to have a supportive family,” Felix says, with as much bite as he can muster. It isn’t much.</p><p>Dimitri relents a bit as he settles into the chair across from Felix. “We all care about you, Felix. I mean…you do look a bit gray.”</p><p>“I guess gray is fine,” Felix says as he watches as Dimitri sets his bag on the counter and proceeds to remove two tins of baked goods from it. One tin goes back and the other gets pushed towards Felix, who opens it: homemade brownies. Not for him, then. “It’s better than—what the fuck did you say to me yesterday, Glenn?—<em>lovesick.”</em></p><p>”Yeah, that one was mine.” Glenn laughs, very satisfied, as he waves a wooden spoon around like a conductor of some useless orchestra. “But would I lie to you? You don't even try to hide it.”</p><p>Felix's original, and perhaps unrealistic, plan had been to hide all of his feelings the minute Sylvain went to space. That fell apart easily the day of and he hasn't had much success in faking it since then. Maybe he had been wound up for years, ever since the day Sylvain was accepted into the astronaut program and started training. It had been easy to keep everything behind closed doors, then. It had been easy to let Sylvain know directly how much he would be missed, because Felix's hands and mouth had always been ready to say so. He never actually said the words aloud to anyone. He still doesn't plan to.</p><p>But now it’s much harder to hide.</p><p>He's on his phone more often, waiting for a notification to let him know that Sylvain has posted something to the ISS Twitter feed. He's awake every night at two in the morning after his phone calls with Sylvain, and it shows on his face and in the way he moves around the house, slow and silent. He pauses for an even longer period of time when he looks out the window at night to stare up at the sky.</p><p>But he would not miss any of that, for anything. Everyone knows it. They let him be most of the time.</p><p>Dimitri laughs suddenly, a belly-deep guffaw. At the stove, Glenn is talking a mile a minute about how he ran into his ex-girlfriend Ingrid, who Felix remembers as being the sort of woman who moved for no one and who could eat half of the buffet table alone at holiday dinners. She’s a world away from Yuri, Glenn’s current partner, though Felix supposes they have the same kind of stubbornness.</p><p>Sylvain was the one who always said he was so glad he had found a real home at the Fraldarius house. He has the whole family to thank for the person he is now: were it not for Rodrigue, he wouldn’t be an astronaut. Without Glenn, he wouldn’t know what it was like to have a real big brother, and he wouldn’t know the words to every Tony Award–winning musical (which Felix doesn’t think is a good thing, but Sylvain doesn’t seem to mind). Without Felix’s mom, he wouldn’t know the taste of good food or the sound of a real piano, which are two things he now considers life essentials.</p><p>“And,” he’d continue, often very close to Felix, lips settling on the curve of his ear, “I wouldn’t have you.”</p><p>That never needed any follow-up.</p><p>“Oh,” Dimitri says, and Felix is pulled back into the conversation. He pouts—he’d <em>liked</em> where his mind was about to go—but Dimitri doesn’t notice. “Before I forget, Felix, I’ve been meaning to let you know—”</p><p>“—That you need a haircut and vitamin D,” Glenn suggests.</p><p>Dimitri turns slightly to hide his face. Felix knows he’s smiling, and Dimitri will pay for that later.</p><p>“No, I quite like your ponytail. It looks nice when it’s long like that,” Dimitri says, and Felix unconsciously reaches up to run his fingers through his hair. “It’s something else. A colleague of mine has started volunteering on the weekends, and I thought that might be something you would want to do...perhaps at the air and space museum?”</p><p>“Why the hell would I want to do that?” Felix grumbles, hand still snaking through his ponytail. “Especially somewhere I’m just going to be reminded of...him...all the time.”</p><p>Dimitri gestures around him. “I know that's how you feel about this house,” he says. “Removing yourself from this environment and going somewhere else for a change will help you.” He pauses. “And, despite everything, I know you still love the stars. Perhaps the planetarium might be a good place for you to start.”</p><p>Felix slumps a bit in his chair. His eyes track Dimitri, who is now opening the tin of brownies. Glenn hands him two plates.</p><p>“Why don’t we go?” Dimitri offers. “Just the two of us. You haven’t been there in so long. It can just be a weekend activity.”</p><p>The last time Felix was at the air and space museum was at least two years ago, and before that it must have been even longer. He’d tagged along with Sylvain, who had been asked to give a talk on planets to a bunch of kids taking part in a summer space camp. Felix sat in the back of the room with the camp counselors and some parents as Sylvain twirled plastic models of Jupiter and Saturn and answered every single question he was asked.</p><p>They did go to the planetarium that time. It was a special show about stars, where someone far too excited to be alive briefly narrated the stories behind each of the well-known constellations. Were it not for that annoying voice and the fact they were surrounded by the same kids Sylvain had just become friends with, Felix probably would have enjoyed it.</p><p>Sylvain certainly loved it. He would nudge Felix gently each time a new constellation brightened the dark ceiling. “Look, Fe,” he’d whisper, far too loudly for a theater setting. “Pegasus! Ooh, and Ursa Minor!”</p><p>But Felix was the one to touch Sylvain’s wrist on the armrest when Cygnus twinkled into view.</p><p>“Aw,” Sylvain had said, and even in the dark Felix could see him smiling. “Your favorite.”</p><p><em>Despite everything,</em> Dimitri’s voice echoes in Felix’s head now, <em>I know you still love the stars.</em></p><p>“Fine,” Felix relents, sighing loudly, and Glenn turns in shock. “Fine, let’s go.”</p><p>Dimitri stops mid-chew. “Felix!” He sounds like he can’t quite believe his plan worked. “That’s wonderful. We’ll go on Saturday, then. I’ll clear my schedule.”</p><p>“I’m not volunteering.” Felix points a warning finger in Dimitri’s direction. “I hate kids. That museum is full of them. I just want to go because I haven’t left the house in a long time, okay? That’s all.”</p><p>“Famous last words,” Glenn warns.</p><p></p><div class="center">
  <p> </p>
  <p> </p>
  <p> </p>
  <p>
    <b><em>letter (ii)</em> </b>
  </p>
</div><p>
  <em>Dear Felix,</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Today we harvested radishes. We planted them just last month, and they were ready to pull out today. Surprise: space radishes look just like earth radishes! We also planted some lettuce a few days ago, but that takes a little more time to grow than the radishes. By the time I leave here I guess I’ll have done what every scientist has ever wanted to do…grow and eat a salad in space. A space-salad. A spalad.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Okay, sorry. I know you don’t think I’m funny and you’re probably going to just skip this letter when you get to it. (I assume you’re reading all of these in order.) But you know all we do is work up here, so I don’t have much else to talk about. By now you’re probably sick of hearing about how much I love being in zero gravity and how good I’ve gotten at tumbling—a skill which I know will not transfer when I come back to earth. I’m relying on you to help me adapt, Fe. I hope I remember how to walk, but if I don’t, it’s all on you, okay? Be my legs!</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I hope everything is good down there. I miss your mom’s dinners, and your dad’s bad jokes, and Glenn’s singing. I miss his musical nights and the blue feather boa he always wears during them, even if the musical we’re watching is really sad and not blue feather boa–appropriate. I even really miss my mom (but not her cooking). Hell, if you catch me in the right mood I might even say I miss my dad and Miklan.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Sometimes we talk about our families up here, when we’re all having dinner together. Edelgard talks about her brothers and sisters—Fe, she has SO MANY—and Dedue brings out a small album that has photos of his siblings and his parents, but also his entire extended family. Mercedes has a brother she’s really fond of, and Petra’s family is apparently royalty or something!? I don’t mention my family much, but I talk about yours a lot. And Dimitri. He’s basically our brother anyway.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>T-minus four months until I get to see you all again.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Love,<br/>Sylvain</em>
</p><p></p><div class="center">
  <p> </p>
  <p> </p>
  <p> </p>
  <p>
    <b><em>the space between (iii)</em> </b>
  </p>
</div><p>Felix is displeased to see that the number of children at the air and space museum has not decreased at all. In fact, it seems like they’ve almost doubled—no, tripled, he thinks as he looks sourly at a group of them covered in an unidentifiable sticky substance.</p><p>Dimitri thinks the presence of children makes any situation welcoming, a belief which Felix adamantly does not share. Dimitri is also a huge guy, so Felix thinks he probably just doesn't see most of the smaller kids unless he can physically feel them bump into his legs. Meanwhile, from Felix's vantage point, it's a sea of fledgling humans.</p><p>“Felix, don't you feel nostalgic just being here?” Dimitri is overjoyed. “Look! They still have the exhibit on planets we went to in the seventh grade.” He points excitedly towards one of the halls, which has an impressive model of the planets hanging over the entranceway. It looks exactly the way it did when they were twelve, and somehow still just as inviting, as if they hadn't aged at all. “And the gift shop has expanded. I suppose business has been booming.”</p><p>They weave their way through the Saturday afternoon crowds and through a few exhibits, some of which Felix remembers and some he doesn't. There is a fancy new spacewalk simulator near the planets exhibit, which Felix is glad didn't exist when they were younger because it probably would have been impossible to get Sylvain out of there within a normal amount of time. The airplane installations are still here, with the life-sized models from every milestone in flight, and a few steps over are the spaceship replicas. And the gift shop still sells the freeze-dried space ice cream, which Dimitri loves.</p><p>“I don't know how you can eat that,” Felix says, watching as Dimitri buys six bags of the stuff from the next gift kiosk they pass. “It's just chalk.”</p><p>“Ah, but Felix,” Dimitri says as he tears a bag open and a powdery strawberry substance puffs up into the air. “The unconventional texture is what makes it. It's less chalk and more meringue.”</p><p>“I don't think you've been eating the right kind of meringues,” Felix points out, but Dimitri is happily chewing.</p><p>The museum is much smaller than Felix remembers, and definitely not as interesting as it was when he was younger and new to all of it. But something in his muscle memory takes him from room to room with ease. Without even realizing it he's taken over Dimitri as the leader and is walking them through the exhibit hall. He doesn't stop to read any of the placards—there is nothing here he doesn't already know, and if it is new to him then he didn't care to learn it in the first place.</p><p>His steps slow near the spacecrafts.</p><p>“Remember when we were in high school and Sylvain got in trouble for trying to open one of the hatches?” Dimitri chuckles as they stand in front of a life-sized replica of the Apollo 11.</p><p>“You didn't think it was funny then,” Felix says. He distinctly remembers Dimitri yelling at Sylvain, making way more noise and drawing more attention to the situation than Sylvain was, and Sylvain was the one trying to enter a spaceship model that was off-limits to non-employees.</p><p>“You didn't either.” Dimitri opens his third bag of space ice cream. “You punched him in the face afterwards because he got us suspended for a day and it was going to ruin my chances to get into a good college.”</p><p>Felix snorts. “The only suspension on your record. Yeah, I remember.”</p><p>When they reach the second floor, the first thing Felix notices is that he can actually walk around—nearly all of the children are gone. The second floor is just the planetarium, the museum offices, and another, smaller gift shop, so the only people here are either waiting in line to see a show, already inside watching, or milling around inside the store.</p><p>“It's nicer up here,” he says to Dimitri, who nods emphatically as he finishes his final bag of ice cream.</p><p>“Let’s sit,” Dimitri suggests, already walking over to a bench near the planetarium ticket counter. “You can’t bring food into the theater, and I know you want to see a show. There’s one that starts in ten minutes.”</p><p>Felix’s face warms a bit. “I didn’t say anything about a show,” he protests.</p><p>“Felix,” Dimitri says, peering into his ice cream bag for crumbs, “you hardly need to say anything when it comes to things that involve Sylvain. You’re an open book with very large text.”</p><p>The warmth on Felix’s face flares into a full-on blush. He turns away from the bench, sulking, and begins to walk towards the planetarium.</p><p>“You have to wait ten more minutes,” Dimitri calls, but Felix ignores him. If he’s as much of an open book as Dimitri says, then this shouldn’t be a surprise. He should know this is the only reason Felix agreed to come here today.</p><p>The one employee at the ticket counter is a man about Felix’s height, with hair the color of a cloudy sky and freckles drizzled across the bridge of his nose. He’s slightly hunched over, with one elbow propped up on the counter as he scrolls through his phone. He looks like he has been standing here, selling tickets to no one, for six years, and will continue to do so for the next six.</p><p>“Excuse me,” Felix says as he reaches the counter.</p><p>It comes out sounding like a complaint, and the employee startles. “Sorry,” he says, clearing his throat. As he straightens up, Felix reads the nametag on his uniform: HI MY NAME IS ASHE and I work at THE PLANETARIUM.</p><p>“Our next show is in...” Ashe begins, and glances at a clock above him that Felix can’t see, Seven minutes. It’s the standard show, but we have some specials airing later if you’d like to buy advance tickets.”</p><p>Felix frowns. “What’s the standard show like? Is it for kids?”</p><p>Ashe blinks, as if no one has ever asked him this question before. Felix supposes that with this museum and its clientele, most visitors just assume everything is for kids. Perhaps the better question would have been <em>will I want to throw myself out the window watching this or not?</em></p><p>“It’s technically for ages eleven and up,” Ashe says, looking up again, either at the clock or just for someone high above to help him out. “Uh, so, it’s not for little kids, even though we do get a lot of elementary school students who watch it. It’s got constellations in it,” he says quickly, as if remembering suddenly that mentioning “constellations” to customers will help appease them in some way. “It covers some stuff about the planets, and also talks about the major constellations and the stars that make up each one.”</p><p>“I know all of that already,” Felix mumbles, and Ashe’s cheeks flush.</p><p>“Stop scaring the museum employees, Felix,” Dimitri says behind him as he comes up to the counter. He has a smudge of freeze-dried ice cream powder on his sweater—he must have turned the bag upside down to get all the crumbs. “<em>You</em> may know everything, but I don’t. And we came here together.”</p><p>“Oh.” Then Dimitri pauses as he realizes what he’s said. “Not like that, though.”</p><p>Ashe looks like he has no idea how he went from looking at his phone two minutes ago to dealing with a sulky gremlin and a large, pleasant man. He smiles, if a bit shakily, and holds up two fingers. “So…two tickets for the show?”</p><p>--</p><p>The show is about twenty-five minutes, which is already too much for the average attention span of a nine-year-old. Felix can’t help but notice that he and Dimitri are the only two adults in the theater without a child of their own.</p><p>Dimitri doesn’t seem to mind. He’s too busy figuring out how to recline the chair so that he can have a “better vantage point to see the stars.”</p><p>“It’s not a real sky,” Felix points out. “It doesn’t matter.”</p><p>But Dimitri has already tilted his chair so far back that he’s almost lying down. The row behind them is empty, save for a family at the other end, and when Felix glances over they’re looking at Dimitri curiously.</p><p>Felix reclines his own chair back (but not nearly as far). He needs to crane his neck a bit to look up at the mesh-covered ceiling, black as the dead of night, domed and flanked by fluorescent lights. At the very least, he thinks as he crosses his arms, he can just take a nap if the show turns out to be terrible.</p><p>When the lights begin to dim, he closes his eyes. A disembodied woman’s voice floats through the speakers, and dramatic, tinny music floods the theater as the show begins. All around him, Felix can hear the children gasping at the sudden illuminations in the artificial sky. He hears some parents hushing them, while others whisper, <em>look, it’s your favorite. </em></p><p><em> Look, </em>something in his mind says.<em> It’s your favorite. </em></p><p>Felix opens his eyes and looks up.</p><p>--</p><p>The Cygnus constellation looks nothing like an actual swan. But those six stars, simple as they are, make Felix feel as if he could fly.</p><p>Summertime is the best time to see Cygnus, which means that every time Felix looks up these days it’s the first pattern he spots in the sky. And when he finds it, if he concentrates hard enough, he can hear Sylvain’s voice reading aloud the story of Phaeton and Cycnus, of how they were best friends who came too close to the sun and fell to the earth. How Cycnus dove into the river to try and recover Phaeton’s body over and over, so many times, and couldn’t. How eventually he was turned into a swan so that he could dive into the river he had mourned next to for so long, so that he could finally bring Phaeton back to the surface to begin his journey into the afterlife.</p><p>It never sat with him quite right, that Cycnus sacrificed so much for someone he loved so dearly, and all he got was a seat in the sky as a constellation.</p><p>But to this day Felix always looks for Cygnus first. It doesn’t matter if the sky is real or fake, or what season it is, or if Sylvain is there or not. Felix looks for Cycnus’ mark. He feels connected to it, in some senseless, heartsick way. In these past few months, he’s sometimes felt as if he’s been waiting by a river, too.</p><p>
  <em> </em>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <b><em>the swan</em> </b>
</p><p>Tonight, the river is an ocean, and Felix is not so much waiting as he is sitting on the bench he’s claimed as his over these past several months, watching the sky and attempting to track the movements of a space station and a certain astronaut within it.</p><p>He spots the swan right away, out of the corner of his right eye. But before he can turn to focus on it better, he hears—thumping. Far away at first, but steadily getting closer and closer.</p><p>And then he <em>feels</em> it.</p><p>“What the fuck,” Felix says, looking down. It’s still dark out, but the glow of the streetlamp next to the bench is enough to show the dim, slightly round, and panting shape of a white dog with its butt sitting square on Felix’s feet. The dog’s cold, wet nose is pushing at Felix’s knees, and he can feel slobber getting all over his shorts.</p><p>“OH MY GOD,” someone yells, as Felix unsuccessfully attempts to squirm away. “BRUISER! STOP LICKING STRANGERS!”</p><p>The dog—Bruiser, Felix guesses—whines and shoves its nose even further into the gap between Felix’s thighs.</p><p>“No, stop. <em>Move,”</em> Felix pleads, still trying to pull his knees up, but the dog doesn’t even shift an inch.</p><p>“SORRY,” the same voice yells again, now getting closer. “BRUISER, SERIOUSLY, YOU ARE SO RUDE!”</p><p>Bruiser huffs, spraying slobber into Felix’s crotch, and stays put.</p><p>“Why do you have to sit <em>there?”</em> Felix hisses. “Your ass is huge.”</p><p>Bruiser stares.</p><p>This is it, Felix thinks. He’s finally lost it. Five months without Sylvain and he’s talking to dogs.</p><p>“My dude,” Bruiser’s owner says as he finally catches up to his dog. He’s a short, built guy with a head of cropped light blue hair, and is leaning over with his hands on his knees as he catches his breath. “I am so sorry. She just got all this energy all of a sudden and took off. I didn’t think she was going to be all up in your junk.”</p><p>“Please remove your dog,” Felix says after a strained pause.</p><p>“Her name is Bruiser,” the short guy says, very proud, and then continues, even though Felix didn’t ask him to. “You know, though, she doesn’t usually get close to people like this. Unless they’re like, really sad or lonely. Bruiser’s real good at knowing when people need a hug.”</p><p><em>What is happening?</em> Felix doesn’t know what to do. <em>Who the fuck is this guy?</em></p><p>He tries to wiggle away again, but Bruiser isn’t letting him go. She’s looking up at him with big, sad eyes, asking for—well, Felix doesn’t know. He’s never owned a dog and can’t remember interacting with one past the age of five, when the Fraldarius’ then-neighbors had a big poodle that Felix touched once and never again.</p><p>But Bruiser is looking right at Felix as if she’s trying to tell him something. She snuffles again. He feels the little nubbin of her tail wagging against his toes, impatient for whatever it is.</p><p>He feels his hands lift before he can even think about it, and then they settle on Bruiser’s head.</p><p>She sighs wetly.</p><p>“Aw, she likes you!” Bruiser’s owner sits down on the bench, even though Felix didn’t give him permission. “She loves ear scritches. Give her some ear scritches.”</p><p>Felix tentatively gives Bruiser ear scritches, and her tiny tail wags even faster. She buries her face even further into Felix’s lap.</p><p>“Bro.” The short guy sounds impressed. “You a dog whisperer or something?”</p><p>“I don’t know what that is,” Felix mumbles.</p><p>He sits there for a few minutes, hands on Bruiser’s head, scratching behind her ears. She looks as if she’s melting into the sand, and the more Felix pets her, the more relaxed he feels too. Maybe the poodle had been a bad introduction to dogs. Maybe he should’ve pet more of them in his lifetime.</p><p>“So,” Bruiser’s owner says. “What are you sad about, man?”</p><p>Felix frowns. “I don’t know you,” he says.</p><p>“So you admit it, then. You’re sad about something.”</p><p>Felix considers taking Bruiser home with him and leaving this short guy tied to the bench for someone to find in the morning.</p><p>“It’s okay, man, being sad is nothing to hide. Emotions make you buff,” the guy continues, and Felix counts to five very slowly in his head. “And sometimes it’s better to talk to a stranger, you know? That’s why people go to therapy.”</p><p>“Therapists are licensed professionals,” Felix points out. “Who even are you? We don’t know each other. I’m not going to talk to you.”</p><p>“I’m Caspar,” Caspar says, and sticks his hand out. Felix just looks at it. “I jog here with Bruiser most mornings. We usually don’t come out ‘til later after sunrise, but I got up super early today and I saw the sky and was like, ‘woah, look at all those stars!’ So I took Bruiser out. And we found you. That’s my story.”</p><p>Felix has no intention of sharing his story, but Bruiser is warm and heavy and soft.</p><p>“I came here to look at the stars, too,” he finally says after a long pause.</p><p>“Sweet!” Caspar seems to be excited about everything. “You a psychic or something?”</p><p>It takes a few seconds for Felix to figure out what Caspar means.</p><p>“No,” he finally says, after coming to the conclusion that Caspar probably thinks psychics are astrologists and that astrology is the same thing as astronomy.</p><p>“Nothing like that. I just—” he begins, but stops abruptly.</p><p>Bruiser’s nubby tail wags against his toes again.</p><p>“—Miss someone,” Felix finishes, and blushes furiously. Good thing it’s dark out, and he’s sitting further away from the streetlamp.</p><p>Bruiser barks, soft and gentle. Felix gives her another ear scratch.</p><p>“That’s tough, man.” Caspar shakes his head. “I feel you. Sorry for your loss.”</p><p>“They’re not <em>dead,”</em> Felix sighs. “It’s...my best friend. Well, my boyfriend. He’s been gone for a few months, and we’ve never been apart for this long.”</p><p>Caspar is nodding enthusiastically. “Okay, I totally get it. Yeah. If I were away from my best friend for that long too, I’d go crazy. I can’t live without him. We’re inseparable. Sitting here moping about it won’t do you any good, though,” he continues. “Why not do something that reminds you of him? So it’ll feel like you’re together.”</p><p>Felix shrugs. “That’s what I’m doing.”</p><p>Caspar stares, uncomprehending.</p><p>“My boyfriend is, uh, an astronaut, so he’s…up there, right now.”</p><p>This is the first time Felix has told anyone about Sylvain—and to a stranger, no less. What the hell is he thinking? It must be the dog, Felix thinks as he looks down at Bruiser’s big brown saucer eyes and cute nose. There is no way anyone could look at a dog like this and feel anything but warm and safe.</p><p>“Oh my god,” Caspar says after a beat. “An astronaut? Like…<em>Star Wars?”</em></p><p>Bruiser barks again, this time loudly.</p><p>“Oh okay, not like <em>Star Wars.”</em> Apparently Caspar can hear some secret language in Bruiser’s barks. “But dude, seriously? That’s really cool! And sad,” he says quickly. “Very sad. Because you won’t see him for fifty years, right? Or he might even get swallowed by a wormhole and then you’ll be in different dimensions.”</p><p>“That’s not a real thing,” Felix says. “He’s coming back in three months.”</p><p>“Oh,” Caspar says, suddenly disappointed to hear that wormholes aren’t real and that Sylvain’s pseudo-<em>Star Wars</em> travel only took him within their immediate galaxy and not beyond. “Well, that’s not so bad then, right? Three months is nothing. Keep looking at the stars, bro.”</p><p>Felix feels his cheeks redden, and he turns away even in semi-darkness. Why has he been cursed with people in his life who can say shit like that with a straight face? <em>Keep looking at the stars, bro.</em> Sylvain would have been delighted. If he were here, he would have found Caspar and his dog and this whole situation hilarious. The three of them would have been best buds in two minutes flat.</p><p>“So,” Caspar goes on. “Can you tell me about what’s up there? I don’t know anything about space.”</p><p>Something about the way he asks makes Felix pause. Caspar’s request is simple, but familiar: how many times did Felix ask Rodrigue or Sylvain to explain something to him? Even though he always pretended to know everything, he’d still ask—about this star or that one, about why some shone brighter than others, about the way the moon pulls at the tides, about the mythology behind it all. Felix has always liked the stories the best.</p><p>He points up, to the left of the triplet of lights that make up Orion’s Belt. Caspar’s eyes follow.</p><p>“That one over there is Sirius,” Felix says. “It’s a dog.”</p><p>Bruiser woofs. When Felix looks over, Caspar is almost sparkling.</p><p>“A big dog or a small one?” he asks.</p><p>--</p><p>Felix has never volunteered for anything or at anything in his life. In high school, when they had mandatory community service, all he did was pick the same activity as his friends so that they would get all the attention and he could work in peace. And that's exactly how it went: there are photos of him with Sylvain and Dimitri, seventeen and at the lake in autumn to rake all the leaves off the paths. Dimitri and Sylvain are mid-laugh, holding four rakes each (two in each hand) and standing next to a pile of plump trash bags. Felix, meanwhile, is further in the back, bent over a clean pile of red leaves with one small rake in hand.</p><p>This is a little more advanced than collecting foliage, Felix thinks as he tucks his phone between his chin and shoulder and opens the fridge. Dimitri is too busy at work to come over today, so Felix has to fend for himself.</p><p>He looks suspiciously at a block of cheese when the ringing suddenly stops on the other end.</p><p>“Hello, you've reached the planetarium at the air and space museum.”</p><p>Felix remembers this voice—it must be the guy at the ticket counter who had no idea what to say when asked about the show. Ashe, he thinks.</p><p>“I'd like to volunteer,” Felix says too fast. He reaches out to poke the block of cheese, if only to have something else to focus on besides how incredibly embarrassed he is to be doing this. “At...at the planetarium.”</p><p>“Oh,” Ashe says, “at the planetarium? We don't have any volunteers right now, so that should be fine. I’d like the help, especially since it’s field trip season.” He pauses. “Are you a student? Do you need community service or something? I'll have to have you come in and fill out some forms before you can start.”</p><p>“No.” Felix shuts the fridge without taking any food out and sits down at the table. “I just like the show,” he admits. He feels tongue-tied, and then stupid for feeling tongue-tied. What the hell is he getting all messed up for? This should be easy.</p><p>“I’d like...” he begins, still hesitant.</p><p><em>Look,</em> he hears Sylvain saying in his head, and sees his smile as he points up above them. <em>It’s Cygnus. Your favorite!</em></p><p>Felix takes a breath.</p><p>“I’d like to watch it more often.”</p><p></p><div class="center">
  <p> </p>
  <p> </p>
  <p> </p>
  <p>
    <b><em>letters (x, xiii, xvii, xix)</em> </b>
  </p>
</div><p>
  <em>Dear Felix,</em>
</p><p>
  <em>How is the volunteer thing going? I’m so happy you’ve decided to do it. I was so sure it wasn’t going to happen. That’s what I said to Glenn when he told me he and Dimitri were pushing you to do it. You never answer my question when I ask why you decided to do it, except some lame answer about how bored you are at home—which I don’t think is a lie, because all you do is work and eat, but I also don’t think it’s the full story. When I come back, I’ll get you to tell me.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I told Dedue that you started volunteering (because I talk about you to everyone on the station—they’re all sick of you) and he said he used to help out at the planetarium when he was younger, too. He said it was part of the reason why he decided to become an astronaut. He kept wondering what it would be like to see those stars up close. Romantic, huh? I’m telling you, Fe, astronauts are all like that. At least the ones here.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Oh, and before I forget: don’t buy too many of those freeze-dried ice cream snacks for Dimitri, ok? You know he’ll eat like six bags in one sitting and that can’t be good for him. I mean, I do that up here, but I’m an astronaut so that’s actually my job.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Talk to you tomorrow, babe.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Love, Sylvain</em>
</p><p>
  <em>--</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Dear Felix,</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I heard from Dimitri that the volunteer thing is going well, except that you’re not so great at the cash register (his words) and you’ve been demoted to crowd control and handling ticket-taking. I dunno, though. If you ask me, I would say you probably wanted to make that happen, so it’s not so much a demotion as it is a promotion.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Gotta keep this short since I’m really tired tonight—I got a lot done today in the lab, and now I’m all tuckered out—but I’ve been thinking about how you should probably move out of your parents’ house soon. I mean, only if you want to. But wouldn’t it be nice to get a place together when I come back? We could get a nice little townhouse, or a condo, even, except it would be nice to have a dog and a small backyard. I won’t be traveling as much as I used to—those days are over. At least for now. I don’t think I can top space in terms of new places to do research.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Okay, time to sleep. Love you.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>-Sylvain</em>
</p><p>
  <em>--</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Dear Felix,</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Today I had to do an interview with Petra for a TV station in Brigid—luckily they let me use English the whole time, probably so that I wouldn’t make a fool of myself. Petra has been a very patient teacher, but I’m still really awful at her language. My Russian is getting a lot better, though, thanks to Edelgard.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>But I seem to be failing a lot at words in general lately. Doesn’t matter if it’s English or not. It feels like this especially on our calls. Have you noticed I’ve been quieter? Or maybe it’s just because you have a lot to say now since you started volunteering. Which I love, don’t get the wrong idea. I love listening to you tell me how much you hate these kids, except the way you talk about them definitely suggests that you don’t mind them too much. And I love hearing about all the different shows they have at the planetarium (and how you watch them when no one’s in line for the next show). I haven’t heard you talk like this in a long time. I’ve missed it.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>And I’m so grateful we get to talk every day, but sometimes the conversations haven’t always been easy. You’re sleepy, I’m tired, and being on video isn’t the same as being in a car driving down the highway or cuddling on the couch or being in bed together looking up at your skylight or out the window.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>It never gets quiet here at night, Fe. I don’t even know when night is. There are always so many machines whirring, and lights flickering, and the sun keeps rising and setting, rising and setting. And every time I see it I just think about being back home with you.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Anyway, I should sleep. Or try to. Talk to you tomorrow.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Love, Sylvain </em>
</p><p>
  <em>--</em>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <em>Dear Felix,</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I keep dreaming about you. They say astronauts have weird dreams in space, but I haven’t really noticed anything out of the ordinary. Lately, though, my subconscious can’t seem to get enough of you. I miss the expression on your face when we drive by the beach, or when your mom makes your favorite meal for dinner, or when Glenn and I start singing along to a musical. I miss the scrunch of your eyebrows when you’re thinking and how pink you get when you’re embarrassed. I miss your hands, how they always find their way into mine, no matter if you’re asleep or awake. I miss the corners of your eyes and the sly tug of your smile and I miss the corners of your house we used to hide in to not get caught when your mom came home unexpectedly. I miss the way you talk only to me when we’re at a party or in public and you don’t know anyone else. I miss your mouth on mine…and other places.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>—Maybe I won’t let you read this one.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Or maybe you should. Nights like these are hard, Fe. I’m sure you know all about them.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>xx<br/>Sylvain</em>
</p><p></p><div class="center">
  <p> </p>
  <p> </p>
  <p> </p>
  <p>
    <b><em>the space between (iv)</em> </b>
  </p>
</div><p>Felix has never told anyone except Sylvain that his favorite constellation is Cygnus.</p><p>When asked, he gives a different answer—sometimes many different ones, depending on how much he cares (often very little) and who’s asking. Lately it’s been the kids who visit the planetarium, and sometimes their teachers; when they’re waiting in line, they have nothing else to do but talk to the attendant standing closest to them. More often than not, because Ashe handles the ticket purchases, it’s Felix.</p><p>Sometimes he says Pisces, since he is one, even though he doesn’t really believe in that zodiac shit. Sometimes he says the Big Dipper, because he’s always liked that one and it’s common. A few times he went with Orion. And if he was feeling particularly lively that day, he would go with Cassiopeia just to see the little kids try to pronounce it.</p><p>But the swan gets him every time.</p><p>“What show did you put on?”</p><p>Felix holds his phone close to his face. He’s on a chair in the first row on the right side of the theater, the one farthest away from the entrance. He’s turned down the lights completely so that the darkness swallows everything but the glimmering points above him. He tries hard to forget that they’re just lights, the same way he thinks that closing his eyes when he’s on the phone with Sylvain will mean that Sylvain is sitting there next to him, only he’s just out of reach.</p><p>“Just the usual one,” Felix says, low, because he doesn’t want Ashe to know what he’s doing.</p><p>Sylvain laughs. “Haven’t you seen that one like a thousand times?”</p><p>“Yeah.” The standard show is what the teachers ask for the most often, so Felix really has seen this one what feels like hundreds of times. Truthfully, he is kind of sick of it—but just the corny parts. The music at the beginning, shrill and overdramatic; the mellow voice of the narrator and her stupid questions (“Do you know what a constellation is? Why, they’re just <em>stars!”</em>); the uninspiring, zoomed-out shots of earth and the moon at the end.</p><p>But everything else reminds him of lying on the roof in the middle of the night, following the line of Sylvain’s arm to where he was pointing at the Big Dipper or Orion or some other nest of stars.</p><p>Everything else reminds him of how he would—how he still would—follow that line forever, no matter where it went.</p><p>“Oh, Fe,” Sylvain says, and there’s a small sigh tucked away at the end of his name that Felix catches, that makes him hold his own breath. “Sentimental as ever, I see.”</p><p>“I am <em>not.”</em> Felix clears his throat and tries to sound like a normal person. “What time is it there? Isn’t it like the middle of the day? You should be working.”</p><p>“Don't worry about me,” Sylvain says. “I...couldn’t wait.” He clears his throat, trying to sound casual, but Felix can hear a hint of something more. “I really wanted to hear your voice. I’m glad you picked up.”</p><p>“Oh,” Felix mumbles as he stares up at the darkness, watching pinpricks of light appear, then fade; appear, then fade. It’s like the sun, almost, when it first starts to appear at the crest of the day.</p><p>Five months ago, Felix vowed never to cry again because it gave him such a terrible headache. Lately, he feels like he’s even gotten used to this extreme form of long-distance. If he thinks about it just for a second, he feels fine.</p><p>Longer than a second, though, and it’s like nothing has changed at all from that very first day he was holding back from sobbing into the dishes in his parents’ kitchen.</p><p>And now, sitting in the planetarium and listening to Sylvain, the familiar music of his voice so stark and so close—if Felix just shuts his eyes—<em>maybe—</em></p><p>“Fe?” Sylvain cuts through the roar of the blood suddenly rushing in Felix’s head. “Fe, you still there? Did you get cut off?”</p><p>“No, I—I just,” Felix starts, but has to pause to collect himself. He places the cool side of his hand against his forehead. “It’s nothing.”</p><p>“Okay, you shitty liar.”</p><p>“I think...” he tries again, and then thinks fuck it, it’s not like he has all the time in the world right now. “I miss you so much,” he finally manages to say as he peers up into the planetarium’s vast, meshy sky.</p><p>How <em>dare</em> his fucking body give in like this, Felix thinks, as his vision starts to blur with tears, and how <em>dare</em> Sylvain exist.</p><p>Sylvain laughs. “Yeah, I know, Fe.”</p><p>Felix is quiet for a few seconds. “I hate you,” he finally says, only with so much longing it’s like he’s just repeating himself saying <em>I miss you.</em></p><p>“But you just said you missed me.”</p><p>“I can hate you and miss you at the same time, you idiot.”</p><p>Felix can almost hear Sylvain smiling. If he would let himself, he could probably almost remember how that smile felt against the trembling skin of his pulse. But he’s too busy trying not to think about how far away they are from each other, and how five months feels like two weeks and three years all at the same time. One day Felix is fine, and the next he’s...well, he’s crying alone in a planetarium.</p><p>“I miss you too, baby,” Sylvain says. His voice sounds like he’s ready to come home. “I’ve said it a thousand times, but I always mean it. Zero gravity is no fun without you.”</p><p>Felix opens his mouth, but Sylvain isn’t done.</p><p>“You should be here with me.”</p><p>His voice trips for just a beat when he says <em>with me,</em> as if the words can’t keep up with the downward spiral of this phone call, or Felix’s heartbeat galloping across what feels like the entire world and back again. What can he say to that? What words can fill this moment, when all he wants to do is crush the cosmos with one hand and take Sylvain’s in the other?</p><p>He can do nothing. Not even turn into a swan.</p><p>“I gotta go,” Sylvain says then, though he sounds like he would rather do anything but. Felix nods, not at all remembering that Sylvain can’t see him but not trusting that he can control his voice right now. “I’ll call you tomorrow, okay? At the usual time.”</p><p>He hangs up. Felix sits, eyes still shut, and exhales deeply.</p><p> </p><p></p><div class="center">
  <p>
    
  </p>
  <p> </p>
  <p> </p>
  <p>
    <b> <em>in a galaxy far, far away</em> </b>
  </p>
</div><p>As a scientist, Sylvain has always been good with his hands. (At least, Felix has never complained.)</p><p>But origami may be a different story entirely.</p><p>“Oh, sweetheart,” Mercedes sighs. She reaches out and places a comforting pat on Sylvain’s wrist as it twists, trying to create an animal out of a crumpled piece of paper that has been folded too many times. “Perhaps it’s just not for you. It’s quite all right, you know.”</p><p>“Wait, Mercie,” Sylvain begs. He smushes the tip of his index finger against the paper in pathetic imitation of a crease. “How’s this? Does it look like a wing?”</p><p>“If you call that a wing,” Edelgard says at the other end of the table, “you need to apologize to birds everywhere.”</p><p>She has a small army of cranes secured on the table and is working on something even bigger now. Sylvain looks down at his own mess.</p><p>“Forget animals,” he says, and undoes his folds for the umpteenth time. The paper is soft and worn now, with sad creases everywhere. “Let’s try something else.”</p><p>“Well, we’ve tried the hat,” Mercedes says, with the air of a primary school teacher trying to tell her student that this may not be the best activity for them to focus on. “And the box, which was rather successful for you.”</p><p>She reaches into a pocket on her tool belt and pulls out another sheet of origami paper, this one a powdery blue, and completely smooth.</p><p>“How about a ring?” she suggests. “It’s a good choice for beginners.”</p><p>Mercedes nods up at Dedue, who is comfortably leaning against a wall above their heads. His large and capable fingers are deftly smoothing together another crane to add to his growing collection. “Dedue has made several, and we just started origami lessons yesterday.”</p><p>Dedue looks away from his hands for a moment to nod.</p><p>“Well, I guess I’m convinced.” Sylvain takes the piece of paper from Mercedes. “But Mercie, it has to look real fancy if I’m going to use it as an engagement ring.”</p><p>On the other end of the table, Edelgard scoffs. “Since when are you getting engaged?”</p><p>“Since five seconds ago when I found out you can make origami rings,” Sylvain says. “That’s like five thousand dollars saved right there.”</p><p>Mercedes beams.</p><p>“I’m sure he’ll say yes,” she says softly, and pats his hand again.</p><p></p><div class="center">
  <p> </p>
  <p> </p>
  <p> </p>
  <p>
    <b><em>letter (xxii)</em> </b>
  </p>
</div><p>
  <em>Dear Felix,</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Do you know what Florida looks like from space?</em>
</p><p>
  <em>It’s sort of like a fin, jutting out from the body of the rest of the country, and so bright in places it looks like it’s decorated with Christmas lights—the big, luminous kind that look like orbs you can hold in your hand. To be honest, it looks like someone dropped a bunch of jewels on the earth and wherever they landed, those became cities. And around the peninsula are pale-blue streaks that look like waves on the ocean, but they’re actually clouds mixed with moonlight. It’s one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>It’s strange to think of how homesick I am, when I’ve never felt this way before about a place in my life. Well—I guess that’s not entirely true. I used to feel this way about space, even though I’d of course never been there until now.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>But now that I’m here…god, what I’d give to be back on Earth. If only to run again, every morning. And feel the cold spray of the ocean, and the sunlight on my skin. I wouldn’t even mind getting sunburnt.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>And of course, you. I’d give this entire space station to be able to hold you again.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I guess that’s why they only used to let astronauts go on expeditions for six months, huh? Anything longer than that and you really start getting cabin fever.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I’m ready to come home. Hope you’re ready to roll over in bed and make some space for me again.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Love,</em>
  <br/>
  <em>Sylvain</em>
</p><p></p><div class="center">
  <p> </p>
  <p> </p>
  <p> </p>
  <p>
    <b><em>let us play among the stars</em> </b>
  </p>
</div><p>Somewhere in Florida, two hundred and fifty-four miles below the International Space Station, Felix glances at the calendar just as he’s done every night for the past seven and a half months.</p><p>Along the way, this started to feel like a chore: counting down the weeks and days until Sylvain returned. All Felix wanted was some kind of normalcy again, some kind of familiarity that wasn’t pixelated and in a completely unfamiliar time zone. At the one-month mark, he was terribly and inconsolably sad. He felt very much the same around the second and third months. And as time went on, he just started to feel annoyed and withdrawn.</p><p>But now he’s come full circle. There are three weeks left, and every day during these calls his chest feels like it’s playing a game of leapfrog with itself or learning how to tumble without a very good teacher.</p><p>“What are you gonna do when I come back from space?”</p><p>Felix blinks. On the screen in his lap is Sylvain’s face, much too close to the camera. He looks as if he’s inspecting something that Felix can’t see.</p><p>“Slap you for leaving me in the first place,” Felix snaps.</p><p>Sylvain settles back against the wall of his cabin, so his top half comes into Felix’s view again.</p><p>“I’d probably like that.” He winks, and Felix rolls his eyes.</p><p>“Well,” Sylvain starts to say, “when I come back, I’ll—”</p><p>He stops suddenly, as if he remembered the next part of his sentence was a secret.</p><p>“You’ll what?”</p><p>“Marry you,” Sylvain says, finally, after deciding the secret was too good to keep to himself.</p><p>He smiles, wide and warm enough to fill the silence that follows. “If you’ll have me.”</p><p>Felix tries to be unimpressed. He tries very hard.</p><p>But it’s been a long journey, and they’re both ready to be grounded again.</p><p>“I don’t want a ring made out of space rock,” Felix says, hoping his laptop speaker won’t pick up the wobble in his voice or the loud, incessant thumping of his unruly heart.</p><p>“Okay. It’s not.” Sylvain’s smile is now a full-on grin, as bright as the stars, or even the sun. “So is that a yes?”</p><p>Felix takes a breath.</p><p>“You better get your ass back here,” he finally says, shifting the laptop so that his face is out of view for a second. He doesn’t know why he’s crying, and he’s so tired of these waterworks. But this time, at least, it’s for a better reason. “Long-distance marriage isn’t really my thing.”</p><p> </p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Thank you so much for reading about Felix being dramatic! (Don’t worry, Sylvain comes back fine and they get a place together. They frame the origami ring.) I would love if you left a comment. &lt;3 Some final things: </p><p>This fic takes place in the same universe as <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/taykash">@taykash’s</a> <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28846773">all I want of the world</a>, so if you enjoyed Caspar and want to see more of his bisexual awakening (or if you want more of Bruiser because who doesn’t), please read her fic - which was also written for The Three Houses AU Bang! And if you read both of our fics, thank you for giving our pieces a home in your brain!!!!</p><p>The musical numbers mentioned in this fic are, in order: </p><p>1. Witch’s Entrance (from Into the Woods)<br/>2. On this Night of a Thousand Stars (from Evita)<br/>3. Mamma Mia (the entire thing, because Glenn listens from start to finish and you know it)</p><p>Finally, the title of this fic comes from <i>Bella Luna</i> by Jason Mraz.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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